Freedom
by TheBlazingOptimist
Summary: "I'm only 20. I'm a 20 year old girl, and due to that fact, I shouldn't be running like this..." As a young girl flees from a marriage she never wanted, she finds meaning in a certain seven-letter word. A prose adaption of Charlotte Mew's poem, "The Farmer's Bride", originally written for an English assessment. Please R&R!


I'm only 20. I'm a 20 year old girl, and due to that fact, I shouldn't be running like this.

I had a life ahead of me at some point; which point that was, exactly, I have no idea. Most of my old life is either dead or dying, dying as I'm letting the mud splash up onto my bare legs.

What I've got now is a rather good feeling, actually. There's a word for it, one word, a little seven letter word that describes everything I am at this moment.

_Freedom._

I find it, and say it over and over again in my mind._ Freedom, freedom, freedom. _It'd make me seem insane to any normal person, but normality's not something that interests me anyway.

A chirping starts in the corner of my mind. Happiness…am I happy, for once in my life?

I turn my head to the left, ready to ask the wide world that same question, and inadvertently catch sight of the chirping's owner.

A bird. More specifically, a sparrow. I know that because I have some sort of connection with animals. At first, I thought it was the usual stage of girls in their early twenties having an obsession with all sorts of animals, but I soon discovered mine was different. Whereas other girls were just obsessed with animals on account of their cuteness, I knew them on a whole other level. It was almost as if I could hear them, and they could hear me. During this whole marriage affair, my bond with every single one of them got even closer. They were, and still are, my friends, my only friends. I reckon it'll stay that way for a long time.

More animals join my side; badgers, owls, field mice, and they start to make me think about something I heard once. Something about a gargantuan animal, with thick grey fur and eye made from ice, with claws and teeth carved as daggers and a siren's howl.

I rack my brains again, once more trying to find an elusive word. I sound it out slowly in my head.

_W-U-L-F._

I probably got a few letters wrong, but that doesn't matter. What matters now is that my legs are still going-tired, but still going- and that he and his friends are quite a few yards behind me.

I've got this theory that he's part W-U-L-F. He has the ice eyes and the siren howl for sure, and I'm almost certain he's hiding the dagger claws and teeth somewhere within him, too.

I shake my head, quickly forcing his grotesque image from my mind, and soon occupy my drained body with the task of surveying my rapidly passing surroundings. There are trees, lots of trees that I may have climbed some time ago, of course, the animals, the cacophony of shouts stalking my eardrums, like a hawk…the grasses, long and tall snakes, tripping me up over and over again, but not making me fall.

Now breaking into a stride, I toss my head upwards so I'm facing the sky. The night sky is a veil, dark and foreboding, hiding me but at the same time making me easy to find…rather ironic, given my current situation.

I force myself to look back, just to catch a glimpse of my would-be captors and how they're getting on.

I manage to smirk. _Badly, it seems._

That smirk soon grows into a smile. It feels strange, smiling this big. I have smiled before, when I've been with my animal friends, but never like this.

I can feel it.

All I've ever wanted, me and my animal friends and the world to ourselves, is within reach.

They've not stopped yet, but to me, at least, carrying on seems like a fruitless effort.

They won't catch me now.

They'll never catch me now.

In this glorious instant, I realise, something else is within reach. It's not an animal, but it's something I know at least a little about.

_Maybe if I scream it to the world, _I muse, _I'll find out what it really means._

So that's exactly what I do.

"FREEDOM! FREEDOM! FREEDOM!"

The animals sing along with me, all as one beautiful natural chorus, and I feel like tonnes of weight is being lifted off my shoulders.

Unfortunately for me, the very thing I love was going to be my demise. _Have I ever told you how much I hate snakes?_

They trip me up for the third time, and after I fall, I feel intense pain, and I'm not able to get back up, not before they surround me. The animals scatter, each giving me a sorrowful look.

As I look up to him, he is grinning, and I embody the fay. I didn't see one tonight, because she is within me.

I'm surprised how I can be so profound at my ending moments. I may not be dead, but I'm certainly all gone.

I faintly hear the sparrow chirping as I'm dragged away. _Goodbye, my friend. May your song go on in place of my own…_


End file.
